MATERIALHAUS for Revit

Import a material package prepared on materialhaus.com into the open Revit project.

What it adds

A MATERIALHAUS tab of its own in the ribbon.

Applying a material from the library

1. MATERIALHAUS ▸ Material Library. The first time, click Sign in — your library follows your account.
2. Select the walls, floors or other elements to finish, or select nothing.
3. Click a material. The line above the library says in advance what a click will do.

By default the material becomes the element's own. A wall, floor, roof or ceiling takes it in its layer — the material a section cuts, a schedule lists and a quantity counts — and only the elements you pointed at change: their type is copied as Generic - 200mm · Red Brick, and the next wall given the same material joins that copy. A picked face says which side: the exterior face of a wall takes its exterior layer, the interior face its interior layer, the top of a floor its top layer. Paint left on a face you picked is taken off, or it would hide the new layer.

Choose Paint on faces under the library's first line to coat faces instead, the way Revit's Paint tool does, leaving the element's material as it is. Either way a single Ctrl+Z undoes the whole click. Loadable families are given the material through their own Material parameter where they have one, or painted; anything that could take neither is listed by name.

Ready-made materials

The Ready-made tab holds what the MATERIALHAUS editor starts from: its collection, and more than 800 CC0 scans from Poly Haven at the area each was scanned over. A click makes the material in your library — on materialhaus.com that takes about a minute — and then applies it like any library card. + New opens the full editor in your browser, for a photo, a written specification, bonds and layers; what you save there appears in the library here.

Editing a material

+ New, and Edit on a library card or on a MATERIALHAUS material under In this project, open the MATERIALHAUS editor in a window inside Revit — the same editor as on materialhaus.com, with every control it has. It uses the add-in's sign-in; nothing is signed in to inside the window. Saving an edit makes a new version in your library and updates the project's material in place: its appearance, shading colour, fill patterns and identity, keeping its name, so every wall, floor and face using it changes with it. Ctrl+Z takes it back. Saving from + New applies the new material like a library card.

Saving a project material to MATERIALHAUS

The In this project tab lists the project's materials, the selection's first. Save to library sends a material's texture at the size its appearance gives it, and MATERIALHAUS makes the full material from it: maps, fill patterns and the package. A material with no texture is sent as its colour, at an assumed 1 m. A texture Revit cannot find on this computer is said to be missing, and nothing is sent.

Importing a material

1. Download a material package from materialhaus.com and unzip it. The folder contains revit-profile.json, a maps folder and a patterns folder.
2. Open the Revit project that should receive the material.
3. MATERIALHAUS ▸ Import Package, and select the package's revit-profile.json.

What is created

Everything happens inside one transaction. If any part fails, the project is left exactly as it was rather than holding a half-made material. Anything that could not be applied is listed in the dialog at the end rather than passed over in silence.

Textures

Map files are copied into a MATERIALHAUS folder next to the Revit document before the appearance asset is built, so the material does not point at a download folder on one machine that nobody else on the project can reach.

Requirements

What the add-in sends, and to whom

Only to the MATERIALHAUS server shown at the foot of the library pane, and only this:

• requests for your library and for the files of a material you click;
• your session token, so the server knows which library is yours;
• the add-in's name and version, in each request's User-Agent.

Nothing about your project leaves Revit — no model data, no element names, no file paths. With your account, the server notes that you use the Revit add-in, when you last did, and the country and city it estimates from your connection (the address itself is not kept); the privacy policy on materialhaus.com lists it in full, and it is deleted with your account. Your password is exchanged for a session when you sign in and is never stored; the session token is kept encrypted for your Windows account only. Import Package reads a folder on your computer and sends nothing at all.

If something goes wrong